Life In The Cell

News, Notes, and Transactions

For some reason, while I was gone a ton of White Sox stuff happened. The timing couldn’t have been worse, especially considering, I was having a rough go of it thinking of things to write about just before my trip. So here’s a look at what happened during my 5-day absence.

Thanks to Joe Cowley’s twitters, we found out that the Sox signed first round pick Gordon Beckham to for a rumored $2.4 million. In my mind it was just a matter of when, not if, the Sox would sign Beckham. It’s good to finally get that done and get him started in the minor league system. He reports down to Kannapolis today.

We also learned from Joe Cowley that Lance Broadway will start tonight for the White Sox in place of Jose Contreras who is out for the year (and maybe forever) with a ruptured achilles. This folks, sounds like an awful idea. Coming into the year, Broadway looked like one of the leading candidates to fill in for the rotation if injury was to befall one of the starters. He then proceeded to suck. On the year he has an underwhelming 4.68 ERA and has been ridiculously hittable. In 138 1/3 innings he’s given up a whopping 160 hits. He’s been even worse as of late. In his last 10 starts, his ERA is 7.27. Maybe the Sox’ thinking was, Clayton Richard did really well in the minors before coming up and sucked, so maybe with Lance since he’s done really poorly in the minors he’ll come up and do well. Or, quite possibly, the Sox were so impressed with his 6 inning, 2 hit, 0 run performance last year against the Royals, they decided they would give him another start. Here’s hoping he does alright, but I have a strong suspicion we’ll be seeing DJ Carrasco sooner rather than later…though, then again, the Sox are playing the Royals.

In the transaction department, the Sox traded a Player To Be Named Later (PTBNL) to the Pirates for Franklyn German. Awesome spelling aside, I don’t know what to make of this guy. He’s posted pretty good ERA’s in the majors before, though he’s posted Nick Masset-esque WHIPs. He may be a back up, back up, back up plan until Linebrink gets back, as he currently is down at Charlotte. As a note, he made a stunning White Sox debut for the Knights by giving up 7 runs (3 earned) in 1 inning of work last night. He should fit right in, no?

The White Sox also acquired Horacio Ramirez from the Royals for A baller Paulo Orlando. First off, Paulo Orlando is nothing more than a warm body. He was a 22-year old in single A that sucked. That brings us to the White Sox and their love of former Kansas City relievers. Add Ramirez to the list of Andy Sisco, Mike MacDougal, and Octavio Dotel. I would be happy with a performance somewhere between MikeyMac and Dotel, granted that’s a wide gap for him to slot himself into. Throughout most of his career, he’s been pretty garbage, due mostly in part to mediocre stuff. This year, miraculously, he’s halved his WHIP (down from 1.847 to .932) which has correspondingly lowered his ERA to a nice 2.55. The one thing to keep in mind is that he’s only 24 2/3 innings. So on one hand he’s posted those numbers in a relatively small sample size, and on the other hand, he’s relatively fresh. I say this trade was worth a shot considering the Sox gave up bupkus for him.

With all these moves there has been a lot of fluctuation to the 25-man roster. As it stands, the bullpen (plus 5th starter) is composed of Broadway, Carrasco, Bobby Jenks, Dotel, Ramirez, Adam Russell, and Thornton. Wassermann was sent back down upon Jose’s (brief) return. Also, the Sox sent down Josh Fields and brought up Chris Getz.